“The industry has brainwashed us to believe that an experience is the equivalent of gratuitous Flash orgy Websites that pushes technology to it’s limits. Create something bright and shiny—consumers will take the bait and you’ll win an award right? Take a Flash micro site, toss in some viral for good measure, add a pinch of uninformed social media and viola! You’ve got yourself some digital marketing. Research? Who needs it?

Folks, we really need to start understanding what really motivates users. There are literally millions of enthusiasts out there producing quality content in highly search engine friendly formats. Not only is much of their content easier to find on the Web—it’s engaging, relevant, and the people who produce it actually talk back to us. It’s time to wake up. We need to get out in the field and understand people—what motivates them, and why they behave the way they do.”

Amen to that!

Read it here, really please go there and read it, I only copied a small bit to give you a flavour.

And I’m celebrating already. Not because it’s my birthday (today the 28th Sept, if you’d like to send gifts). But because I’ve been given the temporary accolade of ‘Best Link’ on BuzzFeed (for a bloody obscure post I grant you, but don’t steal my thunder just yet)…

So. Now I’m 35 I’ve become one of the top wine-box-bloggers, hallelujah. Happy birthday to me ;-)

I was trying to think what to write about on the train home. I’ve had 2 glasses of wine and a hectic day. And I’ve been to an uninspiring talk that I could moan about, but it wasn’t really all that bad. I was hoping that I could rant about something shitty then claim tomorrow, that as a 35 year old, it won’t happen again, I’ll have grown out of it. So imagine my delight when I got an awesome spam mail from…

No, not a viagra company.
Not a Nigerian fraudster.
Not even someone offering hot XXX slut action!

This time a spam from…

The Adweek Creative Conference.

Awesome.

Here it is:

So what’s wrong with that? Well I’ve outlined the best bits just to get it off my chest…

CREATIVE CONFERENCE: MASHUP 2007

WTF. The colon indicates that it’s a creative conference called Mashup 2007, rather than a mashup of creative conferences. Either way I’d rather chop off my own nipples than attend either of the options. Even if they are offering a bargain 4 for 3 offer!

But then they go and tempt me with witnessing ‘creative starpower’. Oh my god! Creative starpower! It sounds like something that the Jedi would have unleashed against the deathstar to render it powerless. So I read on, and what is the nature of this creative starpower…? It’s an ad legend.

Is it just me, or does an ad legend sound like an urban myth? (BTW I’m not having a pop at any individuals here, I’m sure that ad legends do exist, I don’t know Lee Clow and he could be a great guy). Anyway, on with the email…

I don’t know any of them. Leave me alone. And they’ve not come from my nominations. Stop it. Leave me alone. And you’re so excited about it you have to shout “BEST EMERGING TALENT”. That’s AWESOME!!!!

More shitting STAR POWER. And they’re going to help me MASTER the MASHUP. Honestly what the fuck is this all about…

I’ve got 4 minutes left until I’m 35. So goodnight. And this is the last rant of this nature that I’ll ever write. I’ll have honestly grown out of it by the morning. See you for Mashup 2008, I’m praying to be the Keynote Speaker.

I’ve no idea where this came from, but as I was trying to get to sleep last night I came up with this rather odd, and strangely extended, metaphor. Businesses as cat ownership (I’ve a suspicion it might work for kids or dogs too, but I’ve never ‘owned’ either of those)…

When they’re a kitten life is a lot of fun. They’re cute. They chase balls of string. Plenty of exploring and making mistakes. You could sit and watch them all day. Occasionally they’ll pee on the carpet, but the volume of wee is relatively small, and oddly it doesn’t smell all that bad.

Then they get house-trained. They learn to use the litter box. Then they start wandering outside. They’re a bit more of a worry than they were before. They could get run over. A fox could rip out their guts. But they’re still really cute, and growing.

Then they start doing bad stuff. Getting into yucky habits. Humping both beasts and inanimate objects. Fighting. Staying out all night. Hanging out with whichever of the neighbours will give them food. At least they’re still doing interesting stuff, but whenever you hear late night cat-wailing you can’t help but worry…

Then they get tired and lazy and just want to sit around the house in the sunny spot getting fed. Their hair goes a bit matted and off-colour. Perhaps their bladder weakens and you have to follow them around all the time cleaning up. Feeding, cleaning up, feeding, cleaning up. You still love the silly old thing, but it’s not as much fun as it used to be.

I went to the Big Chill a few years ago and came back with a vision that the much maligned ‘Wine Box’ was in fact the perfect unit of alcohol for festivals, BBQs, etc. Unfortunately the wine they put in them is normally horrid. So I suggested to a bunch of people that it would be great to stick good wine into wine boxes and make them really cool. I even found out from people that make wine that indeed the wine box is an excellent vessel in terms of wine-care.

Of course, with it being an excellent idea and all, someone’s gone and done it really nicely…

I’ve just been helping out with a D&AD / IPA talk about ‘sharpening your creative skills’ for wannabe Creative Directors. Not sure how much help I was, but hey ho, I told a few stories and gave my opinion on some stuff.

(The image above is from the top floor of the IPA, I didn’t look inside their copy of Penthouse, but it’s much more advanced than the brown paper bags they used to use when I was a paperboy!)

Anyway for some reason the course got me thinking about the courses that I’d like to do. Unfortunately I don’t think that any of them exist… (if you know different let me know…)

So here’s my five:

Doodling for success – regardless of how good your drawing skills everyone can doodle, learn how to harness your inner doodler to illustrate any idea that might be lurking in your brain so that people immediately get your point.

Making little films – how to use bog standard video editing software to make movies that are interesting and don’t look rubbish.

Making music that sounds like other music – in this course we deconstruct and reconstruct classic genres of music and show you what makes rock rocky, dance music dancey, and so on…

Interior design for the timid – get over your fear of DIY and painting stuff so that you’re comfortable using your home as a creative canvas.

Hypnosis for selling – forget about tricky pitches, learn to hypnotise clients into buying the things you really want to do.

I think they’re all courses that are teachable and I’d definitely pay good money for any of them.

I’m starting a real ‘Drawing Skills’ class on Saturday in the hope that I can end up with some degree of (1).